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by Dr Michael RovatsosSenior Lecturer at the School of Informatics at The University of Edinburgh, and Director of the Centre For Intelligent Systems and their Applications.

50 George Square

Room 2.39

Edinburgh University

What is computational thinking? Often, it is construed as a set ofprinciples that allow us to map problem-solving processes ontocomputer hardware and software, so that we can translate ahuman-defined problem into an information processing problem.But computational thinking can be much more than that – it is a modeof thinking where information is seen as the atomic unit of buildingmodels of the world, and the modelling skills one can developfollowing this mode of thinking are far more broadly applicable thansimply to serve as a foundation for programming digital machines.In this introductory lecture, we’ll introduce some fundamental notionsthat underlie computational thinking – information, data, algorithms,and machine models to enable participants with no or little backgroundin computational thinking to understand the foundational conceptsbehind it. The theoretical principles covered in the lecture willprovide a foundation for learning more about humans, machines, and theways in which they work with (and against) each other.

This lecture is part of a series on Computational Thinking offered by the Anthrobotics Cluster at the University of Edinburgh and hosted by the CRAG (Creation of Reality Group), which will cover technical foundations of computer science and AI and discuss their possible futures and societal impact. It is directed at non-computer-scientists and aims to convey the core skills to enableparticipants to engage in the broader debate around computers and society in an informed way, without attempting to make them programmers.